As Saddam was being hung, the voices of several of those present in the room were heard crying out. They didn't cry out "a bicameral legislature!" They didn't cry out "checks and balances, for god's sake let us have checks and balances." They didn't cry out "we want a government of limited powers." No, they cried out "Moqtada al-Sadr, Moqtada al-Sadr."

Amurath an Amurath succeeds.

And will, until it is realized that people suffused with the tenets and attitudes of Islam are not interested in Western parliamentary democracy. Nor are they interested in guarantees of the rights of minorities and especially of the individual, or in the Spirit of Liberty, which is defined by Learned Hand as the spirit that is "not quite sure that it is right." Try to imagine a Muslim Washington, a Muslim Jefferson, a Muslim Adams, a Muslim Madison, James Wilson, Clay or Webster or Calhoun or John Randolph of Roanoke, a Muslim Lincoln, or for that matter a Muslim John Marshall, a Muslim Louis Brandeis, a Muslim Oliver Wendell Holmes. You can't. And you know why.

And unless, and until, the Camp of Infidels understands that it must not only understand, but make its constant theme, the connection between those assorted amuraths and the politico-religio-legal system of Islam, that refuses to locate legitimacy in the will of mere mortals, all of them rightfully slaves of Allah, and that urges submission to the ruler, no matter how despotic, as long as he is declared to be a Muslim, you never will be able to imagine such creatures. They will continue to be chimerical as long as the connection between the inshallah-fatalism of Islam and the economic backwardness, despite the OPEC trillions, of Muslim lands (where the only real economies are found, in some form, in those countries where Islam has been constrained -- as in Turkey or Tunisia) continues to go unnoticed. And the connection between the social failures, the moral failures, the intellectual failures, of Muslim societies must be connected to the doctrines, the teachings, the attitudes, the atmospherics of Islam. The case for such a connection is overwhelming. It will not be easy to deny it, and at the very least, the world's Infidels will see that connection, and so will the most advanced people born into Islam. It will put Islam permanently on the defensive among its own adherents, who will indeed begin to wonder why their countries have a series of despots succeeded by other despots, why their countries are so naturally violent in their politics, why they are, despite such oil revenues, unable or unwilling to create advanced economies, why their societies, so hostile to non-Muslims and to women, will remain estranged from the rest of the world as that world passes them by, and why the habit of mental submission encouraged by Islam will always prevent them from the enterprise of science, or from all else that requires the encouragement, and not the punishment, of free and skeptical inquiry.

Mahdi this, and Mahdi that. "What do you want to do tonight, Mahdi?"

"I don't know, Angie, what do you want to do tonight?"

"Jeez, I don't know, Mahdi, what do you want to do tonight?”

God, it's going to be boring under the new dispensation.

The re-primitivization of the world proceeds, proceeds because the advanced peoples do not appreciate their own achieved advancement. The uncivilized are inheriting that civilization, because the civilized themselves are insufficiently grateful their own legacy, and indifferent or ignorant of the conditions that were necessary for its achievement over time. And the uncivilized, seizing control of that very civilization they had so little a hand in creating, will determinedly undo it. They already are.

En passant par la Lorraine... (old song)

En passant par l'Irak...and then leaving at long last, and while removing all the planes, all the helicopters, all the Humvees, all the Bradley fighting vehicles, all the trucks, all the tanks, all the everything -- now remember, boys, don't leave any war matériel behind, including computers, including absolutely everything, god knows American taxpayers have spent or committed nearly $500 billion to hideous Iraq and its largely hideous people, and nothing should be left behind.

Let Moqtada al-Sadr be forced to deal, without the Americans to do the fighting for the Shi'a, with those stout-hearted Sunni yeomen of Fallujah, Ramadi, and Tikrit.

That will be fun. That will make it pleasant, and not disturbing, to get up in the morning, and read the latest dispatches from "Iraq."

"circumbobulating...or is that circumbambulating?"-- from a reader

"Circumbobulating" is what you do when you are trying to keep your boat from sinking in rough seas, and it bobs up and down on and in the waves as you go round and round some fixed but apparently unattainable point.

"Circumbambulating" is what a doe does as she tenderly moves slowly round and round her little fawn, making sure that every need is attended to.

"Circumambulate" is what 2 million Muslim pilgrims are apparently doing right now, that is walking widdershins seven times around the Magic Wonderstone, in a ritual that may remind some of strange customs only read about in books, customs from a long time ago.

On the other hand, "circumbombinate" is what busy neighborhood male bees do when they bombinate round that girl down the street, the good-looking one they call "Honeysuckle Rose."

In an unpleasant variation on a 1066 And All That theme, Red Ken Livingstone manages to be Wrong and Wrepulsive. He combines the worst excesses of Cavaliers and Roundheads, notably the spendthrift imperiousness of the former and the Puritan zeal of the latter. So it is with some surprise that I find myself this morning (well, afternoon, actually – this is New Year’s Day) very grateful to him. Ken has Got Something Right.

I have celebrated New Year’s Eve in London for many years now, but always locally, at the homes of friends, with friends at home or occasionally in a local restaurant. I have sometimes wondered about going into central London to see the firework display and enjoy the atmosphere, but decided against it. Any enjoyment would be overshadowed by the prospect of trying to get home in the crowds. The tube would stop running between 12.30 and 1am, the buses were full to bursting and if you manage to get a cab it would cost you an arm and a leg.

For the past two years, however, tubes, buses and trains have been running all through the night. What’s more, travel between midnight and 4.30 is free. And there is no need to feel sorry for the drivers – they are paid triple time.

I spent a delightful evening, mainly in a family-run restaurant where, apart from my group of friends, everyone was Italian or Sicilian – we had to teach them Auld Lang Syne! – and left around 2.30, wondering if this all-night tube would be all it claimed to be. The trains were busy, but no more so than in the rush hour, and arrived every minute or so. Walking through the barriers without paying felt a little strange, as if the city were on holiday, which it was in a way. Without the panic caused by rushing for the last tube, people were relaxed, and, of course, a little jolly. I was home by 3.30, the journey taking only a little longer than usual.

It crossed my mind today, though not last night, that security may not have been very tight. Perhaps carefree evenings like this will not go on forever. One attack on New Year’s Eve would be a major setback. So my message to Red Ken is: thank you for your free all-night tubes, but if you want Londoners to carry on partying, stop kowtowing to the likes of Qaradawi, who would disapprove, as Khomeini did, of any kind of fun and merriment.

TWO suspected Islamic militants had been arrested with explosives hidden inside toys which they planned to blow up at a busy market in New Delhi, Indian police said today. --from this news item

Muslim agents have been moving into Mexico, hoping from there to make it to the United States. Suddenly piñatas have lost their appeal.

If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work.

If you say so, Shakespeare old chap, but I wouldn't mind giving it a try. Let me win the lottery in 2007, and I promise to make good use of my money and my time. Tomorrow, though, it's back to school - well work actually, but I get that same sinking feeling I always used to get as a child at the start of a new term. To cheer myself up I found some silly things that schoolchildren are said to have written in exams. Perhaps they are not all real, but they could be. I remember a classmate referring in all seriousness to Pope's "heroic cutlets", so anything is possible:

The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of the children, Cain, asked "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Issac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Issac, stole his brother's birthmark. Jacob was a partiarch who brought up his twelve sons to be partiarchs, but they did not take to it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites. Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw.

Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fougth with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in Biblical times. Solomon, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.

The inhabitants of Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and travelled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pyramids are arange of mountains between France and Spain.

Without the Greeks, we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns - Corinthian, Doric and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intolerable.

Achilles appears in 'The Illiad', by Homer. Homer also wrote the 'Oddity', in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.

Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames, King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harlod mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was cannonized by George Bernard Shaw, the Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offence. In midevil times most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verse and also wrote literature.

"The fact remains that most people in the world are good people and prefer peace over war. The same holds true in Iraq. For Hugh to callously dismiss the truth with such sweeping generalizations..."-- from a reader

On what basis do you assert that "most people in the world are good people" and further assert that the sole test of this is that, you claim, they "prefer peace over war"? Because it feels good to think so? Because it is comforting? Many people, raised up in a complete belief-system -- see the Nazis, see the goose-steppers of North Korea or any number of places -- are prepared to make war, are taught that war is a good thing. Some of these people, so taught, may ignore those teachings with which their society is suffused, but most will not.

And in wartime, one does not have the luxury of making delicate individual judgments one can afford to make in peacetime. Is this peacetime, or is this wartime? I claim it is wartime. I claim that Western Europe is already in a war, a war declared upon it that it so far does not recognize, but a war which when recognized will be seen as one to preserve its own legal, political, and social institutions, to preserve its habit of free inquiry and its achievement of free speech and the other rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

You can stick with pious Rodney-King like bomfoggery if you wish. I don't think, however, that such sentiments or such a mental set help to ensure the physical and moral survival of things which are threatened and deserve to be protected. And I would have had no difficulty in writing, in 1944 or 1945, about "hideous Germany and its largely hideous people" but would not have written about "hideous Italy and its largely hideous people." Why the difference? Because in the first case most Germans marched off happily for Der Fuehrer. There was hardly any opposition, and the odd White Rose movement does not allow us to pretend otherwise. There was the mas-murder of the Jews, in which a great many were complicit, including regular soldiers of the Wehrmacht.

Italy was a completely different matter, as shown by the uprising of Italian troops against their German masters in Albania, Greece, Yugoslavia, and in the widespread opposition to Mussolini, and in the overturning of the Italian government, and much else, including the widespread movement of partigiani.

In observing the behavior of Muslims today, do you find that many of them "want peace" in the sense in which you mean it? Do they truly deplore terrorism? Do they deplore in sincere and heartfelt fashion, or in some other way, the behavior of other Muslims when they persecute or kill non-Muslims in the countries they control? Tell me all about the Muslim opposition to the behavior of the Muslim Arabs in Sudan? Or to the treatment of Hindus in Pakistan and Bangladesh? What Muslims have expressed sorrow at the expulsion of 400,000 Kashmiri pandits? What meeting of the Organization of Islamic States has expressed the need to cease the persecution of non-Muslims in Muslim lands, and even, possibly, to accord them full legal equality?

And what Muslim group has deplored the incessant demands made for changes in the legal and political institutions of the Infidel lands among which Muslims have been allowed to settle? Can you think of a single Muslim group that has publicly deplored the threats made against the people and government of Denmark, not least by Muslims living in Denmark? What Muslim group has ever denounced other Muslims for behavior that is clearly contrary to the laws and customs of the peoples and polities of Western Europe? Any? Ever? What Muslim group has expressed its full support for the security measures -- modest measures -- undertaken so far, and denounced all those other Muslim groups that are trying at every step to tie the security services of the Western world in knots, and to make their task more difficult at every step?

Do you, taking in the world, find that Muslims "want peace" in the sense in which most of us mean that, or do they "want peace" as in the peace that will come when Infidels cease to block the spread of Islam, and accept their foreordained fate, the final triumph of Islam, not necessarily through military means, to accept the "peace" that will come when Islam rules, and those who continue not to accept it will be allowed to keep their lives, and even in a humble way to practice one of the two other monotheisms, but as the price for that will have to accept a permanent status of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity, as dhimmis, that was imposed on non-Muslims over 1350 years, and which as a doctrine merely reflects the immutable texts of Islam.

One can simply assume that "everyone wants peace." One can assume -- dispensers of comforting pieties do it all the time -- that People Are the Same the Whole World Over. But the rest of us will look at the canonical texts of Islam, to see what they contain, will study how they are received (is Sura 9 important? Do certain Qur'anic passages "abrogate" certain others and if so, which are which, and what is the overall effect?), and then study how Muslims themselves appear to derive meaning, and what that meaning is, from Qur'an and Hadith (the winnowed, and ranked-by-authenticity stories, about Muhammad's sayings and deeds), and the Sira, the life of Muhammad. Is the Qur'an still regarded as the immutable Word of God, or is there a possibility of interpreting much of it away? Can the Qur'an be placed into a historical context, that is into history, so as to deprive it of its uncreated, beyond-history status that makes it so hard for Muslims to accept any changes to its accepted meaning?

And what about the long history of Muslim conquest of non-Muslim peoples and lands, and the subsequent subjugation of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists, and others? Can we see a great variety of treatments meted out to these non-Muslims, or is the treatment remarkably similar, whatever time and wherever the space?

Neither the texts, nor the observable past or present behavior of Muslim peoples, suggests that we should be comforted by the belief, offered without the slightest evidence, that "most people in the world are good people and prefer peace over war." There have been people, usually but not always limited in time and space, who have lived by war, who have wanted war. The modern peaceful liberal democracies are an achievement, a delicate achievement that can be undone. They were almost undone in World War II, and it took both the damage inflicted on the Germans by the Red Army (of a distinctly illiberal Soviet Union), and the most illiberal development of atomic weapons, and the willingness to use them, to hasten the end of the war against Japan, a country whose population was, like that of Germany, in thrall to a belief-system (Kodo) that prevented its rulers from surrendering until two atomic bombs forced its necessity upon them.

I don't accept your claim that all people "want peace." I am not prepared to trust the fate of this country or everything that I deem worth saving to such Rodney-King expressions. That in some places the world became, over time, less Hobbesian is a tribute to the slow development of institutions and to the cultivation of attitudes that are not universal, and were largely the creation of the Western world, a Western world in which Christianity (or the Judeo-Christian tradition), and Hellenic philosophy, and Roman law-making, and two thousand years of slow and not always steady or straight-line development, led to such things as the American Constitution, and to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and to many other things, not readily transplanted, and to an intelligently tolerant way of life that is becoming, here and there, unintelligently tolerant, supported as it is by the bromides you offer.

I don't like bromides.

I've never made any final resolutions and I'm never going to make any.

The Babbitt and the Bromide

From the Broadway musical "Funny Face"
Music by George Gershwin
Lyric by Ira Gershwin
© 1927 (Renewed) WB Music Corp.

Verse 1

A Babbitt met a Bromide on the avenue one day.
They held a conversation in their own peculiar way.
They both were solid citizens- They both had been around.
And as they spoke you clearly saw their feet were on the ground.

Refrain 1

Hello! How are you?
Howza folks? What's new?
I'm great! That's good!
Ha! Ha! Knock wood!
Well! Well! What say?
Howya been? Nice day!
How's tricks? What's New?
That's fine! How are you?
Nice weather we are having but it gives me such a pain:
I've taken my umbrella but of course it doesn't rain.
Heigh ho! That's life!
What's new? Howza life?
Gotta run! Oh my!
Ta Ta! Olive Oil! Good-bye!

Verse 2

Ten years went quickly by for both these sub-sti-an-tial men,
Then history records one day they chanced to meet again.
That they have both developed in ten years there was no doubt,
And so of course they had an awful lot to talk about:

Refrain 2

[Repeat first 8 lines of refrain 1]
I'm sure I know your face, but I just can't recall your name;
Well, how've you been, old boy? You're looking just about the same.
[Repeat last 4 lines of refrain 1]

Verse 3

Before they met again some twenty years they had to wait.
This time it happened up above, inside St. Peter's gate.
A hard each one was carrying and both were wearing wings,
And this is what they sang about as they kept strumming on the strings:

Refrain 3

[Repeat first 8 lines of refrain 1]
You've grown a little stouter since I saw you last, I think.
Come up and see me sometime and we'll have a little drink.
[Repeat last 4 lines of refrain 1]

From The Complete Lyrics of Ira Gershwin

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